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A jam submission

in the grace of our maliceView game page

there's a closet in my skeleton
Submitted by kiririn light (@kiririn51) — 4 hours, 9 minutes before the deadline
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Comments

Ok, but jokes aside, man, this game makes me feel like this guy: 

There's a certain amount of pain that I just can't understand, like I've never felt like this, but after playing the game I feel like maybe I understand it a bit. I certainly feel pretty depressed right now, which is honestly a commendable achievement for a writer. Maybe the story isn't as intricate as your other games, maybe it's not as interesting narratively, but I really feel like you got the overall feel down pat.

You also did the epic gamer references right this time, since they felt in-character and something that kind of person would say (what kind of person that is exactly, I can't say, but the fact that the character of Bee is so unexplored leaves enough room to suspend your disbelief unlike soul and brittle). I think you've really improved in your writing, and I look forward to see you get even better and dab on the yiiks and doki dokis of the world.

Also, if this really is what you originally had in mind of al filo del sol, man, I could not have changed it more. I really respect your presentation, even if afds has more stuff from a gameplay/story perspective, it's not even like a millionth as good as this game when it comes to presentation. So far I've been leaving that stuff mostly to the art team, but I feel like I really gotta start thinking about that stuff and trying to be all cinematic and shit like you do. I think I gotta start watching more movies in general, because what you learn from reading books doesn't really translate to videogames.

Anyways, good stuff,  and if I read the subtext correctly, it's good to see you make a game not about lesbians for a change.

al filo del sol if it was good

Submitted

damn theyre literally me. the aesthetic alone had me slamming my desk with each new scene. paired with writing that hit just right. oughhh

Submitted

I hope someday to write something that comes close to being as good as this. Just talking about it in any critical way makes me want to vomit from how much it shows how fake and manipulative I am. The weight of the present could not be more immediate.

Submitted
Spoilers

I liked the setting and mood, though I didn’t care for the endless referencing. I thought the setup was kinda neat, but I kept thinking that I wanted to know what was actually going on, but felt it was being purposefully withheld from me. So I sorta realised it was going to have a conclusion of this sort before getting to it. Once I saw the ending, it got me to try again and see if picking “nicer” (hardly) choices could lead to a better conclusion, but soon realised there was no avoiding it.

That got me thinking; I feel like what we see in this VN would work remarkably better if it was reframed as a conclusion of a longer project that I actually got to play: the “wanting to try and make things better” part of it (even though that was more Bee’s thing than the protagonist’s) yet inevitably reaching this terrible (lore-wise) conclusion would be pretty amazing if we had seen the escalation of events that lead to this point. That said, as a videogame and not another form of media, it would still make little sense if it wasn’t us, the character as well as the player, that wanted to try and make things turn out well, too.

Basically, this is a great ending to a third act, I just sorta wish I had seen the first two.

Submitted (1 edit)

Really cool writing style and vibe! Managed to resonate with me while also feeling very very personal. The ending works really well.